We have just launched a new service to verify phone numbers. This service differs from the one we already had for validating telephones in that we can now offer 100% reliability in the validation process and all in real time.
Differences when verifying telephone numbers
There are several ways to verify phone numbers, but we can classify them into 2 main groups.
Verify telephone numbers using the communications operators’ networks. This method performs a “simulation” of a call to validate the phone number. With this we are making a deep connection to the phone number. We can offer total reliability in the validation of telephone numbers of mobile terminals.
The main disadvantages are that this type of verification has a cost since it requires access to networks private companies of the different operators to be able to carry out the verification. Another The disadvantage is that this type of connections, “without making the call”, since it the user never knows that we are verifying his or her number, we can only verify it for him or her. apply to cell phone numbers. Landline telephone numbers, at We cannot perform this type of verification using any other type of network.
Syntactic verification of numbers. For landline numbers, the most widespread type of verification is syntactic. What we do is to check that the number is well formed, with the corresponding international calling code and validate it against rules that allow us to obtain the telecommunications operator to which it belongs.
The main advantage of verifying phone numbers syntactically is the low cost, since the whole verification process is performed on our servers. The trade-off is that even if a number is syntactically well constructed, it does not mean that it is operational.
Our Api is able to distinguish between landline and mobile numbers, so you don’t have to worry about knowing what verification method you should apply.
Which method is better to validate phone numbers is better
The answer is it depends. If what we are looking for is precision. I would recommend a “simulation” verification call. If what we are looking for is a low verification cost. Our choice should be the syntactic verification of telephones.
How it works to verify phone numbers
We have created a Rest API to perform the number checks. In each call we only have to indicate the telephone number and the service token. It will answer us with a JSON where apart from telling us if the phone number is active, it will give us a lot of information about the operator to which it belongs, if the mobile has been ported, its IMSIcode…
The technical implementation of these calls is very simple, in little more than 5 lines we can integrate this verification in our Web application or backoffice services. In this way, we can verify in real time a telephone number.
Another implementation that we can employ is the use of an Excel file to perform the verification. All you have to do is enter the numbers one below the other and apply the API call.
All this information is not only used to validate the number, but there are also companies that use it to create a user profile and view their reliability. Avoiding fraud situations.
Another application for the marketing of telecommunications services is the telecommunications is to know what the user’s current operator is and to offer an offer that can better meet your needs. Since we can know at all times The user’s operator and whether his number has been ported.
As you can see using the API to verify phone numbers is a very simple and effective method to keep your database up to date. If you want more information, I recommend you to visit the “Phone verification API documentation” section. To know the costs of phone verification, you can see it in “Phone verification prices“.
Remember that we can not only validate a phone number, but we can also verify an email address to know if it is active 😉
